by Jerry
One morning, I made my way to the bathroom, enraged and panicked because my weight had gone up to 137 for some reason. An angry and painful hum bellowed from the portal.
Was it that cheesecake? Too much? Maybe it was those grapes I had between lunch and supper? Why did I do that? That was so stupid!
The facility bathroom was across from Emily’s office. Her door was open and her light was on, but she was nowhere to be found. On one of the monitors I noticed the illustration they had showed me when I first came here: Picture A showed the portal in the stomach eating cube shaped “food particles”. Picture B displayed another portal dropping them into a processing portal. Picture C . . .
I never knew there was a Picture C. I looked around; the facility was empty as always. I went into Emily’s office. There was an uneasy feeling that I wasn’t where I belonged, like a sneaky peasant sitting on a king’s throne. Still, I looked at the illustration more closely.
Picture C showed the food in the processing chamber being ground up. I was surprised to find there was also a Picture D. It illustrated the processed food coming out of a machine on a tread, in the form of a liquid sludge. I had no idea what I was looking at. I was startled by the “You Got Mail” ping from her Outlook on the other computer. The new email was from the Huàn Xióng company.
Ms. Andre,
Increasing the portal’s intake has proven to be far more efficient in paste production. Thank you for fulfilling our request.
Xi Yuán
Huàn Xióng Incorporated
Paste production? Paste. A shudder electrified my spine when I remembered the blurb about the ReFo nutritional paste.
I looked up and noticed Emily casually standing in the door. She had a good humored smile on her face and she giggled.
“James? What are you doing? Wanna do my job today?”
“My food is being made into paste?”
Emily’s smile dropped into a crooked frown. It seemed to me like her entire face transformed and her expression became stern.
“Yes.” Her voice was deeper.
“That people will eat?”
She nodded.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Was it really necessary? Who cares?”
“I do!” I gagged. I felt violated. It was like people would be eating my shit.
“Okay. Picture this, James. There are millions of people in the world who want to be thinner or at least they want to maintain a healthy weight, right?” She slowly walked toward me. “Then there are billions more who just need to be fed. Period. The number is growing every day, but we don’t have enough food!”
She came close and stood over me. I never realized before that she was slightly taller than me.
“In nature things cycle and recycle all the time. Why can’t we humans do that with our food? We and Huàn Xióng have set out to create a world where the haves can be as thin as they like and the have-nots can be fed. Everybody can be happy.”
She put her hands on my bony shoulders. She was putting slight pressure on them. She smiled and her tone bubbled up again.
“You had no idea you were so important, did you?”
I looked down and shook my head. This wasn’t what I wanted. I was thinking about my body more than ever now. I felt like Delambre saw me not as a human being they wanted to help, but a machine. A queasy hum vibrated within me.
“You should tell people before they . . .”
“Why? People are selfish. They don’t understand the things that need to be done to ensure we can survive a changing world.”
A jab of guilt hit my gut. She lifted my chin up so I could look into her piercing hazel eyes.
Her tone lowered again and her words struck like a cobra. “You can get the portal removed and go home empty-handed. But you will never have control of your weight or your life and you know it! So, what’ll it be?”
I decided she was right; the only problem was that I couldn’t get over myself. I nodded complacently.
She smiled a warm mother’s smile. “Let’s get you some breakfast, shall we?”
That evening, I was making my way to the cafeteria when I heard a woman’s high, boisterous voice in the reception area, shouting. “What do you mean I don’t have permission to see him!? Do I need permission to knock your damn head off?”
There was also a soft male murmur trying to calm her down.
Recognizing these voices, I came into the reception area. There, a thick squat woman was chewing out the terrified elderly receptionist accompanied by the voice of Bob Seger. Next to her stood a lanky, pale shy man. When the woman saw me, her eyes widened with horror.
Her voice softened, “Baby. Oh god, what did they do to you?”
“Mom, Dad, what are you doing here?”
“Brandon told us you were here,” Dad said softly.
Mom burst in, “What the hell are you thinking, James? You didn’t need to lose any more weight!”
“I’m fine. I’m not trying to lose anything.” Putting on my pathetic poker-face.
“Look at you,” she said, scanning me up and down.
I didn’t even hear Emily come in behind me. In her bouncy voice she said to my parents, “Hello! How can I help you?”
“You can help me by letting us take our son home. Come on, James!” Mom grabbed my arm and began to make her way to the door.
“James is free to leave whenever he wants to. Of course, we’d have to remove the portal and he wouldn’t get his money . . .”
Mom stopped stiff.
“Portal?” Dad asked.
I shook Mom off me. “The hell do you care what I’m doing?”
“James, don’t talk to your mother like that.” Dad spoke slightly above an indoor voice.
Mom glared at Emily. “You can’t do this, you bubble-headed bitch.”
Emily’s broad grin demoted to a half smirk. Her voice deepened again. “James signed all the contracts. Whatever happens is in his hands.”
Emily looked to me and her voice bubbled up quite suddenly, “What do you say, James?”
I stared straight into Mom’s eyes, wide and glistening with hurt. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“There you have it!” Emily smiled at my parents. “Shall I show you out or will we need to get the authorities involved?”
Mom gazed at me, unbelieving. Her eyes started to water even more. Dad gently put his hands on her shoulder and turned her around. As they went outside, Mom dropped her head and began to cry. The portal gave off a soothing hum, but my heart dropped.
Emily put her hand on my shoulder and beamed proudly. “See how much control you’ve taken over your life?”
For the rest of that day I stayed in bed thinking about what happened that morning. I hadn’t seen Mom cry since Grandma died. I then thought about how much Mom would cry if I were to die. But I wasn’t dying, was I?
I’m underweight, I look like death, the portal in my stomach is sucking me dry, and not only will no one around me stop it, they condone it. I do, too. How the hell do I get out of this?
Maybe I was selfish. But it was Delambre and Emily who were exploiting the sad and insecure. To them I was just step one in a production line. Crank the machine to max efficiency until it breaks, because when it does there are plenty of others.
If I died Dad would be devastated and Mom would never be the same. Brandon would no longer have anyone who foolishly loves the Chiefs as much as him.
This wasn’t just about my weight, I realized. This was about my life: not just mine but the lives of those who care about me. I needed to end this. I needed to get this damn thing out of me.
I drifted to sleep. The next morning I marched toward Emily’s office.
The building was livelier than I’d ever seen before. On the far other end of the hall, I could see staff in white coats slipping in and out of rooms. A staff member came toward me holding a tray with fruit, bacon and waffles on it. I thought it was for me, and wondered why they would be bringing me
food. But she opened the door to another bedroom. Inside, I could see a thin young woman sitting at her bed. When she made eye contact with me, the woman looked surprised and uncomfortable. The staff member turned and shut the door.
Emily was hanging her coat up when I entered and slammed the door shut. Her warm smile seemed to mock my anger.
“Good . . .”
“I want it out. I don’t want to do this anymore.”
“Haven’t we had this discussion before?” She sighed and approached me. “Get some breakfast, then we’ll talk some more.”
“No, I’ve made my decision.”
Emily put her hands on my shoulders, squeezing a bit. “You know what I’ve read? Very interesting. Some people are doomed to always be overweight. They can exercise and eat healthy as much as possible, but the weight will always come back!”
I ripped myself away from her, “You can’t do this to people!”
Her tone lowered, “Do what? I’m not forcing you to stay here, it’s all up to you. I’m just saying, you’ve made so much progress.”
I lifted my shirt to show her my ribs, “Look at me!”
“You signed the contracts. You understood the risks. How much weight you gain or lose is in your control.”
I lowered my shirt again and shook my head. “Get this out of me!”
“If you get that removed, you’ll never have control of your weight again. For the rest of your life you’ll . . .”
The portal gave a hum that made me so queasy, I felt dizzy. I had to stop her before she could convince me again. I snatched a “Delambre” pen from the holder on her desk and jammed it into her muscular right leg. She screamed in pain and dropped to her knee.
“You bastard!” She shrieked at me like a banshee.
I grabbed another pen and pointed it at her face threateningly, I couldn’t keep myself from trembling.
Emily glared at me. “Fine,” she snarled. “I hope you get big and fat!”
I woke up in front of the great big gun. The procedure was over. I half expected a hum, but there was none. To my left stood Emily, leaning away from her wounded and bandaged leg, with two staff members. To my right were two police officers.
As they escorted me out of the building, my hands cuffed behind my back, my thoughts raced.
Am I doing the right thing? Did I just overreact? Am I selfish with no regard for the greater good? Is Delambre right? Or should Emily be in cuffs too? Maybe all that “feeding the world” stuff was bullshit. After all, “cheap” doesn’t mean “free”.
Have I doomed myself?
When we came into the reception area, I was surprised to find it filled with five people: four women and one man, heads down, signing the deadly contracts. They all looked normal weight, healthy. They looked up at me. I recognized the look in their eyes: fear, no confidence, and shame.
I shouted at them. I told them not to do this, to leave. As much as I resisted, the police pulled me out the door with ease. I continued to shout at the terrified people, leaping and kicking into the air. The police were practically carrying me by my arms at this point.
I never felt lighter in my life.
IN EVENT OF MOON DISASTER
Rich Larson
Sol is so intent on the fizzing comm channel that he doesn’t notice Laurie is back until her gloved fist raps against the airlock window, sending shivery vibrations through the whole hopper.
“Sunnuvabitch.”
He snaps out of his seat, pulling the headset down around his neck. Laurie is standing in front of the airlock, arms folded. She taps her foot for effect, but in the stiff suit and low gravity it looks more like she’s keeping time to a slow-mo banjo. Sol gives her a few exaggerated claps as he dances over to the lever and heaves the exterior door open. Laurie gives him the finger and steps inside.
As soon as the atmosphere reader dings green, she hits the release on her helmet. It levers up off her face with a hiss, revealing her sharp chin, snub nose, dark eyes under knitted brows. She looks unnaturally pale in the airlock light, and her dirty blonde hair is matted with sweat.
Sol opens the interior door. “Well? You all right? I was about to suit up and go after you, Laurie, Christ.” He jams his headset against one ear and buzzes Control, but gets silence again. “Still can’t raise Control. Something’s messing with the radio.”
“I only lost transmitting functions,” she says, stowing her helmet on the hook. “I could hear you just fine the whole time. What the hell were you chewing on?”
“Peanuts.” Sol grabs the package off his seat’s armrest and checks the label. “Honey-roasted. They’re honey-roasted and pretty damn good. You want some?”
“No. Yeah. Give ’em.” She clambers out of the suit and holds out her hand. Sol sees it shake a bit as he pours peanuts into her palm, but pretends not to notice. She scoops them into her mouth.
“So? You going to tell me what was down there, Laurie?”
She points to her full mouth.
“Oh, I get it. Revenge chewing. You’re revenge chewing at me. I’m a nervous eater, Laurie, and you were in that crack with no radio contact for twenty-seven whole minutes.”
Laurie swallows. “There was nothing,” she says. “I took the readings. Big electromagnetic spike, like we saw from orbit, but no physical source that I could detect. No sign of the drone we sent down there. I don’t know. It’s fucking weird, is what it is.” She runs her hands back along her hair. “I’m shot.”
Sol makes a gun with two fingers. “Bang.”
“As in I’m tired.” Laurie pinches the bridge of her nose, then goes to her hanging helmet and pulls out the datastick. “Here, have a look. I start singing, at one point. To drown out the chewing. Ignore the song choice and the high notes.”
Sol takes the stick. “All right. Hey, take a nap if you need it. Pickup window’s in two-and-a-half hours.”
“Thanks,” Laurie mutters. She starts to slide past him, toward her chair, then stops. “There was nothing down there, Solly. But it was weird.”
“Hey.” He pats her on the shoulder. “We’re on the fucking Moon.”
“That is true,” Laurie says, clambering past him into her chair. She unrolls a vacuum-packed blanket and pulls it over her head. Her voice comes muffled. “That is a fact.”
Sol watches out of the corner of his eye, making sure she’s breathing normally, as he verifies the pickup window and runs another engine diagnostic. Before long she’s snoring, which seems like a good sign. He claps the headset on, plugs the datastick in, and reaches for the honey-roasted peanuts.
Sol has the feed from Laurie’s helmet up on his screen, watching through her eyes as she makes her way along the bottom of the crevasse. She’s right. There’s no sign of whatever unidentified body struck the Moon’s eastern hemisphere and plowed a half-kilometer crack through the dust and rock. No sign of the drone they sent to investigate. Just an empty, eerie tunnel.
Eerie, but he can’t quite put his finger on why. Something about the juts and whorls of rock seems slightly off to him, something about their angles. He’s leaning in for a closer look when someone knocks twice against the airlock window.
Sol bolts upright, heart hammering his ribs. Laurie shifts under her blanket. He claps both hands over his chest and exhales and tries to think of possible explanations. The best he comes up with is debris. Nothing more specific than that, just the word. Debris.
He goes to the airlock. Cold sweat drips from his armpits down his sides. Someone in a spacesuit is standing in the dust outside, shifting from foot to foot.
“You are not debris,” Sol mutters.
The astronaut taps their helmet and signs a radio malfunction, then taps their padded wrist where a watch would be. Someone else is trying to investigate the impact. A rogue state, or some private corp, somehow got here first without anyone knowing. And somehow they are wearing Laurie’s suit, with the distinctive smiley decal on the oxygen tank.
Sol suddenly gets chatter on his head
set. He pulls it back up, dazed. Laurie’s voice.
“Sol, don’t fuck around, Sol, I blacked out down there,” she says, sounding more panicked than he’s ever heard her before. “I lost you on the radio, I blacked out and something happened. Let me in, Sol, goddamn you.”
The astronaut thunks their helmet up against the window and he can see Laurie’s mouth through the faceplate, lips moving as she cusses him out.
Sol yanks his headset off. A convulsion runs up and down his body; for a second he thinks he’s going to vomit. Then he strides back to the dash, to the chair where Laurie’s snores are fluttering her blanket. He grips the corner with one sweaty hand, braces himself, and pulls.
Laurie’s still there, splayed back in the chair. She raises an arm and drapes it over her face. “Go time?” she mutters.
“Uh.” Sol shakes his head. “Don’t know.” He looks back at the airlock, where Laurie now has both gloved hands splayed against the window. He pulls his headset back up, but hears only hyperventilating, and he realizes Laurie can see herself in the chair.
A crackling sob comes through the radio. “Sol, who is that? Sol? Who’s that in my . . . in the chair?”
In front of him, Laurie swings herself upright, rubbing her eyes. “You go through the footage?” she asks. “I did warn you, right? About the high notes.”
“Oh, you were great,” Sol says faintly. “Operatic, even. But. Laurie.”
“That is not me, Sol,” Laurie begs through the headset. “That is not fucking me! Let me in, Sol, something happened down there, and you have to let me in, please, please, please—”
Laurie in front of him sees the Laurie waiting at the airlock window. Her eyes widen. Sol remembers her taking off her suit in the airlock. How her face looked pale, almost waxy. When she goes to get up from the chair, he pushes her back down. Not hard, but hard enough.